Moses Dobruška

Moses Dobruška or Moses Dobruschka, alias Junius Frey was a writer, poet and revolutionary. His mother was the first cousin of Jacob Frank, who claimed to be the Jewish messiah and founded the Frankist sect. On 17 December 1775 he converted from Judaism to the Catholic faith and took the name of Franz Thomas Schönfeld. On 25 July 1778 he was elevated to nobility in Vienna, becoming Franz Thomas Edler von Schönfeld. Together with Ephraim Joseph Hirschfeld, who did not convert, he became one of the main activists of the masonic lodge of the “Knights of St. John the Evangelists for Asia in Europe,” active in Germany and Austria between 1783 and 1790, which was the first German-speaking masonic order to accept Jews.